164 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



4f. 

 Eichhorn as 

 successor 

 of Astruc. 



tiiigen by the writings of the Orientalist J. D, Michaelis 

 (1717-91), and more prominently by Eichhorn, whom 

 I mentioned above, as being, alongside of Heyne and 

 Wolf, one of the principal leaders in historical criticism. 

 The vaguer attacks which had been made all through 

 the eighteenth century, both in England and notably by 

 Voltaire in France, upon the historical books of the Old 

 Testament and the truthfulness of the Mosaic records, 

 received a more tangible form and a definite starting- 

 point through the anonymous publication in 1753 of a 

 work entitled ' Conjectures sur les memoires originaux 

 dont il parait que Moyse s'est servi pour composer la 

 Genese.' The book was written by a French physician, 

 Jean Astruc (1684-1766), otherwise well known 

 through a variety of medical works, Eichhorn at Got- 

 tingen was the first to draw attention to Astruc's im- 

 portant discovery of the twofold name under which the 

 Divine Being is introduced into the Mosaic records — 

 viz., alternately as Jehovah and Elohim. This discovery 

 the author had made use of to demonstrate the twofold 

 origin of the sacred histories, and to separate them into 

 two records, which partly agreed and partly differed from 

 each other. The most important work in which Eich- 

 horn made the beginning of what is now called Old 

 Testament exegesis was his ' Introduction to the Old 

 Testament,' which appeared from 1780 up to 1824 

 in four editions, latterly in five volumes.^ In this 



^ With Eichhorn "the interest 

 in these (Old Testament) studies is 

 only to a small extent theological, 

 nay, hardly even religious, but al- 

 most exclusively arcluoological, lit- 

 erary, and critical. The contribu- 



tions towards a comprehension of 

 the antiquities of the Bible as they 

 could be gathered from the manneis 

 and customs of the present Orient 

 appear here as the principal thing." 

 Also in the study of the Mosaic 



